from the well-that-sucks dept

Just a few weeks ago, we wrote about how Flattr had integrated with services like Twitter and Instagram to make it incredibly easy to support content creators (including us!) by just favoriting a tweet. Not surprisingly, in the first month after that went into effect, we saw a boost in revenue from Flattr. Unfortunately, Flattr has now announced that Twitter has forced the company to stop this integration.

Flattr had been using the Twitter API to figure out what people had favorited, and had been gathering data about the specific tweets. However, Twitter told the company that it was violating section IV. 2 C from its API terms. That term says that:

Your advertisements cannot resemble or reasonably be confused by users as a Tweet. For example, ads cannot have Tweet actions like follow, retweet, favorite, and reply. And you cannot sell or receive compensation for Tweet actions or the placement of Tweet actions on your Service.

It's that last part where the trouble came in. Of course, it seems clear that that particular line in the terms of service was designed for situations where people are "selling" tweets or something similar. Not for cases where a service like Flattr is helping people make money from supporters. In response, Flattr even said that it would waive its standard 10% fee on any Flattrs that come via tweets. Twitter told them it wasn't good enough. Now, you can argue that "rules are rules," but rules need to make some sense. And it's unclear what kind of sense this makes. There's nothing about the way in which Flattr is using Twttier that is negative for Twitter. It seems like a really nice and useful addition. Obviously, we're somewhat biased, because it also helped us make a few bucks (not much, but some), but I can't see how it makes sense for Twitter to block this functionality.

from the give-it-a-go dept

We've written about Flattr a bunch of times over the past few years, as we find it to be a really interesting experiment in both micropayments and in supporting content creators. If you're unfamiliar with the concept (which was created, in part, by Peter Sunde from The Pirate Bay), each user of Flattr puts some amount of money (total is up to the user) into its account each month, and they can then click on "Flattr" links around the internet. At the end of each month, Flattr tallies up the total amount of content you've "flattr'd" and divides your monthly allotment by that amount. Thus, if you want to give creators $10/month, and then flattr 10 pieces of content, each creator will get $1 (actually, $0.90 after Flattr's 10% cut). If you flattr 20 pieces of content, each one gets $0.50 (er... $0.45). The thing we liked about this is that it gets you past a big part of the mental transaction costs of micropayments: that is, if you have to think about "is this piece of content worth $0.50 or $0.10?" you're already going to lose a bunch of potential customers who don't even want to bother with thinking about it. But, with Flattr, they don't have to think about it for each piece of content. Once they're convinced to take part and fund their account each month, it makes no difference to them how many piece of content they flattr.

As some of you know, we've had a Flattr widget on every one of our posts for the past couple of years. It brings in a small amount of money each month -- maybe between $50 and $100 or so. Of course, part of the issue is that there are some usage hurdles. The service has a small but dedicated user base, but it seemed to stagnate over the years. On top of that, there was a bit of a chicken and egg problem, in that the process of finding content that is Flattr-enabled is still somewhat haphazard -- and then Flattr users need to remember to flattr that content. However, that's now getting much easier as Flattr has announced integration with a number of different services, including (most importantly) Twitter, Instagram and Soundcloud (also: Vimeo, Flickr, github, 500px and app.net). So, now, if you connect your accounts, you can give money simply by favoriting tweets.

And, yes, that means if you want to toss a bit of change our way, you can now do so with a Flattr account by favoriting the tweets on our official Twitter account or my personal Twitter feed as well -- both of which are connected to the Techdirt Flattr account.

Of course, the other hope in all of this is that it will help lead to more people using Flattr in the first place. That's because Flattr users who favorite a tweet of someone who is not using Flattr are still designating those flattrs for that account. That doesn't mean that Flattr is holding money for those accounts (since that could add up!), but simply accumulating flattrs. Thus, if I "favorite" a Twitter account that doesn't use Flattr once a month, and that person finally signs up for Flattr a year later, it would count all 12 of my favorites as if they came that month (thus giving users on other services incentives to sign up sooner rather than later). Flattr is working on automatically notifying people who can "claim" money, but initially they're hoping the community will do that job for them, with an "unclaimed" page that highlights those with the most Flattrs on the various connected networks. Someone call Randall Munroe and let him know he has a whole bunch of unclaimed Flatttrs for the xkcd Twitter account. Ditto Wikipedia and the Torproject. Similarly, someone might want to alert Linus that his Github account is leading the way in unclaimed Github flattrs as well.

There are, also, some obvious social networks that are missing -- though I've been told that Facebook, YouTube and Tumblr are obviously key among them. It sounds like Google+ may be a bit further down the list. All in all, we still love the idea of Flattr, and think that this is a good step as it evolves its business. It still requires getting people to sign up to pay -- and that, of course, will always be a big hurdle -- but making it easier to do something once you have joined seems like a very good thing.

from the pin-drop dept

There's a rumor going around that Deutsche Telekom is thinking about buying Sprint. This is a bad idea for any number of reasons. Deutsche Telekom owns T-Mobile, which competes with Sprint, and which has certainly fallen way behind AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint in terms of coverage and next generation network deployments. At the same time Sprint has definitely faced some tough times recently that have weighed heavily on the stock. So, you could see why Deutsche might initially think about it. T-Mobile is behind in the game, and merging with Sprint could (emphasis on could) jumpstart the business a bit. Plus, it's reasonable to think that Sprint may be undervalued these days. But... it's still a bad idea. T-Mobile and Sprint use totally different network technologies. Sprint is still dealing with the mess of trying to integrate Nextel's iDen system into its own CDMA-based system (which is part of the reason the company has been in trouble lately), and dumping a third totally incompatible technology into the mix doesn't seem wise. You could (again, emphasis on could) argue that Sprint now has some experience merging totally incompatible networks, but so far it's not exactly good experience. All in all, this seems like someone tossing out a suggestion. It's hard to see this as a legitimate possibility.

from the culture-clash dept

Marc Andreessen has an interesting post looking at the consequences if Microsoft officially goes hostile in its bid for Yahoo! Thus far, the two firms have been engaged in a careful dance where each side has left the door open for a negotiated settlement. But with neither side showing any sign of backing down, it's looking increasingly likely that Microsoft will be forced to make an overt bid for control of Yahoo's shares. There are two basic strategies Microsoft could pursue. One would be a tender offer, in which Microsoft attempts to purchase a majority of Yahoo!'s stock. The other would be a proxy fight, in which Microsoft nominates a competing slate to Yahoo!'s board of directors, on the understanding that the new slate would accept Microsoft's existing offer. Either of these options would spark litigation from the losing party. Then, it would have to clear regulatory hurdles, and after that would come the hard work of actually integrating the two companies, something that will be made more difficult if Yahoo's senior management is still bearing grudges from the takeover fight. I've pointed out before that culture is extremely important in high tech firms. Companies need to attract the best talent, and talented programmers want to work where the most innovative work is being done. Right now, Google already has an edge over Yahoo! and Microsoft on that front, and the gap is only going to widen if they spend the next two years beating each others' brains out. It's not at all clear that the Microsoft-Yahoo merger would make sense even if it were done with the support of Yahoo's current management; it's a doubly bad idea if it involves all the nastiness that would come with a hostile takeover.